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[mahalakshmi]

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[mahalakshmi]

[ She goes to take another sip - how far was he? Further than her? She couldn't tell. Had -
to make sure she didn't fall behind. ]

You have heard I am sure my family is only a little better than merchants?

[vorrutyer]

[ His smile at her is a little arch. His knowledge of the Vor is encyclopedic: of course he's heard. ]

[mahalakshmi]

[ She nods, swallowing down before she speaks again. ]

They are right. [ It's cheerfully admitted. ] But we are very good ones. Part of that is the land we own - it was some how missed by the Cetagandan's destruction. For a long time, I was the only heir apparent to them. So I took their cultivation seriously. Once I began to realise - how they were being worked, who was working them, through my father's authority where no one else would listen to me - [ Nana was stubborn and set, and Tatya scrapped to his wishes. ] - we began to implement them.

[ And she grins, reckless with the laughter that bubbles up. ] Now, I have a brother. [ If she is bitter, that she should be passed over for his birth - it is out weighed by how much she loves him. ] And enough money even your family does not care, and you are marrying me instead. All I am left with is 'strong opinions about dirt.'

[ In her best impression of him that she could muster. ]

[vorrutyer]

[ A little glitter in his eye again. He's being deliberately provocative, though you'd never know it by the sweetness in his face. ]

Ah. So it was for the money that you learned about dirt, was it?

[mahalakshmi]

[ She frowns at him - offended so easily that he would even suggest it. But this time - small mercies - she does not slap him. Rather gives him a clumsy shove at his shoulder. ]

I learned about it because someone needed too. I thought, even if my lands just passed to my husband, that I would still have to look after them, the people on them. [ And she flushes, beaming with pride. ] They eat better now. All of them, because I did so. Every single one of them promised they would kill you in your sleep if you ever tried 'that Vorrutyer nonsense'.

[vorrutyer]

[ With amusement: ] I see. An army of strapping, well-fed, loyal proles with a proclivity towards murder. It's a wonder you settled for a mere Vorrutyer, instead of intimidating the Emperor himself into matrimony.

[mahalakshmi]

[ She starts laughing - good lord, the Emperor? ] Never. Then I could never walk away from anyone again no matter how they bored me.

[vorrutyer]

Well, no, you couldn't. But on the flip side, if they really bored you, you could take their heads. A proper mad empress.

[mahalakshmi]

[ She hums in the thought, leaning forward in a stretch, sheer indulgence. How a proper mad Empress should be, to her mind. They sprawled so well in those paintings. ]

I would need to be a Vorrutyer first. So you can teach me such things. Instead of yelling at them about dirt.

[vorrutyer]

Ah, lessons in madness. A challenge. You need to have a natural facility for it, after all.

[ He leans back in his chair, eyebrow a little lifted. ]

First, you must start fussing far more about your appearance.

[mahalakshmi]

[ She thinks about it, then thinks about it again. Looking at him in a certain kind of scrutiny before she leans back again. Getting lessons in madness, then, is it? Well, she did tell him all her opinions on crops for all things.

Well, if there's any promise to alcohol, it is that she will not remember much of it. To her lessons then. ]

I suppose you are very beautiful. [ She does her best with it, tugging at her skirts to arrange it as best she can. ]

[vorrutyer]

You're quite right that I am.

[ He presses a hand to his heart. ]

And I have been waiting for an acknowledgment of the fact all this time. Good heavens, it's taken far too long. I was starting to get worried.

[mahalakshmi]

[ her hand cups over her mouth as she laughs again ]

Will I need to tell you every day?

[vorrutyer]

[ He smooths down his moustache. ]

It would certainly help my self-esteem if you did. I don't suppose you might write me poetry?

[mahalakshmi]

[ She bites her lips, thinking a minute - no, no she doesn't, not her own at least. But she takes her step forward, a hovering hesitation - he wanted poetry, well she could give him something half the same as she rocks the rest of the way, leaning her face closer to his, taking in that small soft breath that is - recklessness, as reckless as yelling at him in a garden. ]

'I swear, since seeing Your face, the whole world is fraud and fantasy. The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf or blossom. The distracted birds can't distinguish the birdseed from the snare.'

[ Sounds out each word carefully, sincerely, all of the meaning she needs. Not her own words, no, but she thinks, she thinks it will make do. ]

[vorrutyer]

[ A flicker of surprise in his eyes gives way to a smile of genuine, unfeigned pleasure as he listens. A small nod, a tilt of his head. ]

High praise. I aim to confuse and befuddle.

[ A moment, and then he leans in and murmurs back at her: ]

Des humains suffrages,
Des communs élans
Là tu te dégages
Et voles selon.
Puisque de vous seules,
Braises de satin,
Le Devoir s’exhale
Sans qu’on dise: enfin.
Là pas d’espérance,
Nul orietur.
Science avec patience,
Le supplice est sûr.
Elle est retrouvée.
Quoi?—L’Eternité.
C’est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.

[mahalakshmi]

[ His hair looks so soft, it is hardly fair. She wants so very much to brush against it. See if that is some kind of illusion that her drink fogged gaze has put together out of the moment and the warm words she feels said so close. As much as she hears them.

A temptation too easily given into, as she lifts her hand up, and brushes against it,
lightly with the curl of her knuckles to keep it as unpresuming as possible. ]

Do you see me as an eternity, then? [ Laughed, because she is full of it. ]

[vorrutyer]

[ Foolish, perhaps. This is his fiancée, not a potential conquest. But he reaches out in return, lifts his fingers to stroke hers, and replies in a warm murmur: ]

I am not usually a believer in eternity. But I must have faith, with you - because every moment away from you is an enernity of agony, and every moment with you makes me pray it will go on forever.

[mahalakshmi]

[ He's playing with her, he must surely be. It is not fair, that she must share him. He has made that much plain. He belongs to no one and nothing and - fine. Fine, she thinks she can manage this. She knows she will. It will not be so childish a dream as she might have otherwise imagined but - regardless of what he said, she would find her own ways to be happy.

And she thinks he would approve, even if he does not know, of the indulgence she has in looking at him and wanting otherwise. ]

To you, that must make me something worth loathing? [ He is such a good liar, and the drink, the drink is enough to make her want to believe it for at least a little while. ]

[vorrutyer]

Loathing...

[ His thumb skims against her knuckle, and then - with a strange sort of shyness, a nervous hesitancy - moves forward to touch her wrist. It's fine, he thinks to himself. She's drunk. He can play around like this without real consequences...Even though he knows that, in truth, that's not true; he has an eye that's trained well to recognize when someone is drunk enough to forget and when someone isn't, and she isn't. ]

Perhaps. Or perhaps it's adoration. I scarcely know how to tell the difference. The only thing I know I cannot feel is indifferent.

[mahalakshmi]

[ The veins run blue - there, run like river lines, up the soft corner of skin. She is still what she is, covered for the most part. Drinking in his company is one thing, to be shamefully indecent is another. But for it, that half inch of skin seems at once - her whole body, soft as lightning, loud as droplets.

Don't look at it, don't look at it, it will disappear. Opts to wets her lips, the sharp press of her teeth over it. Feeling that shaken warmth unfurled like a seed into each of her limbs. Taken up root. ]

Is that to be my wickedness? Making you feel indifferent?

[vorrutyer]

I should hope not.

[ He traces that vein, moving upriver like a merchant-barge, traveling to where the skin is covered by sleeve, pushing up against that border. ]

The one thing I never want to be is cold. Kill me with fire, lady, but never with chill.

[mahalakshmi]

You are safe with me, my lord, I do not think that's a crime I will ever be accused of.

[ It spreads, that heat from so little a source. It makes - no sense. None at all. No more than how drinking should make her warm either. Prickling as it goes, it is barely a touch barely thing at all when she had kissed him, sealing that they were both be part of this, both meet each other in this - different kind of business venture.

Less than that, nothing at all, not to be thought of even as she doesn't move an inch from it. He could be cutting her apart and she would not think to move away from him. ]

[vorrutyer]

I suppose not, no. Of the two of us, I am the cold one.

[ His other thumb comes up, joining the first in the stroking of her wrist. Tentative but sincere, his hands, even as his mouth speaks oblique half-truths. ]

But there is nothing for which you have no passion, is there?

[mahalakshmi]

[ It's such a trial, to keep each breath steady. Moving and out slowly from her. The effort in keeping herself from doing nothing, when she has to swallow down on something prickling in her own throat, in the corners of her elbows and knees, that tickle. Can't go back or forward either, even if she knew what she was to do.

He is only playing, she says again, he is Byerly Vorrutyer and he has kissed more men and women than she will ever know and done more so. She can be as firm in this as he can. ]

To a fault, I am told.